Bernard Care Center

The primary reason this turned out to be a decent nursing home is that it received an elite inspection score. Its inspection score was far superior to its overall score. In the inspections category, we gave it a grade of A. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing our inspection ratings. One of those factors is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being quite minor. Although this nursing home had some deficiencies on its inspection report, none were major deficiencies based on CMS' deficiency scale. A few minor deficiencies shouldn't stop you from considering a nursing home.

The next most favorable area we gave this nursing home in any category came in the area of long-term care, where we awarded it a grade of B-. Our long-term care ratings are more critical for people needing more conventional services associated with personal care. After looking at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination data. Frankly, we were a bit alarmed this facility vaccinated 43.237705 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is several points below the national average. Nevertheless, this place excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Another strength of this facility is its favorable grade in nursing. We gave them one of our better scores in that area, with an D. When determining our nursing grades, we weigh both staffing levels and the training levels of the nurses. This nursing home averaged a meager 0.2 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is not a very impressive figure. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing scores. This nursing home performed well when it comes to avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers.

Switching gears to the next area, this nursing home really didn't fare very well. Due to a poor grade of F in short-term care, this was this nursing home's poorest category grade. Short-term care ratings are vital for prospective residents in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically requires higher levels of highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means a wide scope of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Considering its grade in this area, we were not surprised to learn that this place was well below average in terms of its quantity of physical therapy and registered nurse hours offered to its residents based on the metrics we looked at. Honestly, this was about what we expected to find. The final item we looked at in this area is the number of residents who ultimately returned home from the facility. This facility struggled quite a bit in this area as well, with just 0 percent of its residents returning home. Unfortunately, this was quite a bit below average.